A pseudo-Chinese setting

[Cheomesh]

Most sword and sorcery type settings have a crude overlay of (usually Late) Medieval (Western) Europe.  A rare few have a Greco-Roman overlay.  Between the two is an Asiatic overlay, more typified by Japanese-like styling (Oriental Adventures for D&D).  Settings in Fantasy China are around, but I haven't seen any published ones.

Chinese history and culture isn't something I know much about at all.  This is good, because it will make it more difficult for me to get lost in myriad details and get hung up on things that don't matter.  To wit, I have laid down a few ideas for what might turn into something, or it might not.  It's very short (as of the moment), less than two pages.  Let me know what you guys think, maybe it can have some group development.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fBJFlhjbJDvpIgllR0h41LKZYTJAU1ddB27OTYwBnL0/edit?usp=sharing

M.

[Steerpike]

Your notes look like a good start, especially the broad strokes.  War seems to be the major driving force, with the fourth-kingdom-as-battleground; I get the sense of a very military sort of focus.  Is this intentional, or more a function of the "top-down" overlay of your notes?  Often in Sword & Sorcery the focus isn't on large conflicts but on small ones; they tend to be picaresques more than epics.  Do you see this as a very rural/wilderness-y game, or more urban in focus?

One thing I've noticed about settings that depart from the "Late Medieval Europe" paradigm is that they tend to follow the myths and politics of their source material more closely, whereas in the typical Late Medieval setting, stranger elements tend to creep in to liven up the endless grey castles, knights, feudal villages, etc.  Like, if you take Lankhmar, for example, it's pretty clearly a sort of vaguely European city somewhere between London and Seville, but it's got sentient rats and weird gods and seven-eyed wizards and invisible ghouls and all sorts of bizarre stuff that owes very little to European mythology per se, at least in any pure sense.  But then you look at Rokugon, and it's pretty much feudal Japan with some monsters borrowed form other Asian myths and modified a little to fit a game-world.  It's all very "authentic."

I'd point to something like Leetz' Arga or Ghostman's Savage Age as interesting counterexamples that riff of their source material without being beholden to it.

Just some thoughts to ponder.

[Xathan]

Whenever I see "Psuedo-BLANK" setting, my immediate reaction is "This is going to go well or this is gonna suck."

I think you're headed majorly towards "Well."

The class list is my favorite part; I love that instead of your class being what you do "I'm a fighter," "I"m a rogue" It's who you are "I"m a member of the militia", "I'm a Diafu." I do think the Spiritualist class is where that breaks down; it feels so generic compared to the others. Maybe spit it up into "Qi-user", "Taoist sorcerer," and "Diviner?"

I'll give some more feedback later on, but wanted to share my 2cp.

[sparkletwist]

:ontopic:

I like the amount of "Chinese" feel, personally. While it's probably not historically accurate to just ram together two disparate eras like you did, I think that, in practice, the amount of damage done is minimal. You're mixing it up, and that's good, and creating an interesting setting that isn't strictly bound to one era of history, and that's good too. I think authenticity for its own sake doesn't add much, personally.

The nice thing about a lot of these "premodern" settings is that all sorts of subtle magic can be worked in and it doesn't diminish the feel at all, even if the feel is supposed to be vaguely historical. In these times, people weren't that often trying to scientifically look at everything, and there were a lot of beliefs and superstition-- and enough inexplicable events going on in the world that these beliefs had more than enough substantiation, in people's minds. Throwing in people who have some actual powers into this mix isn't exactly a huge departure. It adds options for players and mystery to the setting without, I think, destroying what it's all about. (On the other hand, I feel like the magnitude of magical power in something like D&D, taken to its logical end, destroys what the setting is supposed to be about)

I also like the idea of connecting the players to the "fourth kingdom," with some caveats, anyway. The idea of struggling against greater powers and carving out your own kingdom-- one that you get to shape-- is something that I think the traditional RPG can do better than many other types of games, because of the way the creativity of the players and the GM can take things in a new direction. On the other hand, this kind of thing can easily frustrate players, too, if the game devolves from that into simply them being at the mercy of these greater powers, and a whole bunch of "more awesome than you" NPCs being paraded around. This is the problem Forgotten Realms had a lot of the time.

That's not to say I think you're going to do this, I'm just saying, it might be a good idea to watch out for that.  :grin:

Finally, I agree with Xathan that making the "classes" actual jobs/roles in the setting is a good idea. It gives players an archetype to work from, but also allows them to break archetype more easily, because the class isn't some meta-archetype of "a thing you have to be" but rather an actual job that exists in the setting, and the sorts of people who do that job may actually differ from one another quite significantly.

:offtopic:
All the authenticity and Kaidan stuff has been moved to here.

[Gamer Printshop]

Finally, I agree with Xathan that making the "classes" actual jobs/roles in the setting is a good idea. It gives players an archetype to work from, but also allows them to break archetype more easily, because the class isn't some meta-archetype of "a thing you have to be" but rather an actual job that exists in the setting, and the sorts of people who do that job may actually differ from one another quite significantly.

Not to go on and on, regarding Kaidan, but this was a thought when we created Way of the Samurai - as one of the reviewers told, his expectation was that the supplement would focus in on the Pathfinder Samurai class providing archetypes. While we certainly included archetypes for the samurai class (four of them), Way of the Samurai is about the samurai social caste, not just samurai warriors. Palace guards, police officiers, poets, administrators, a lord's retainers, ronin bandit gangs are all samurai warriors. However the samurai caste includes onmyoji wizards, forest wardens, even stealthy ninja activity is done by samurai.

So Way of the Samurai contains traits, feats, and archetypes for gunslingers, rangers, wizards in addition to the classic samurai warrior.

We did the same for yakuza, in Way of the Yakuza. In OA yakuza were exclusively rogues. Whereas in Kaidan, yakuza consist of rogues, bards, wizards, fighters - the yakuza is a criminal organization that requires fighting men, casters, diplomats as well as rogues. Such societies aren't cut/paste thieves, rather living organizations that consist of many kinds of class/jobs to exist.

We're placing an entire chapter on factions of Kaidan, in the GM's Guide to Kaidan (will be released in Oct/Nov '13). And none of those organizations are exclusive to one adventuring class - any class will fit, as long as the archetypes are adjusted for it.

[LD]

Have you given some thought to including the younger brother of Jesus Christ in some form?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan

" As a symbolic gesture to purge China of Confucianism, he asked for two giant swords, three chi (about 1 metre) long and nine jin (about 5.5 kg), called the "demon-slaying swords" (斬妖劍), to be forged."

Also, Buddhist Hell could have some relevancy. Sculptures and reliefs of Buddhist Hell can be found in certain locations in China and Buddhism had a significant effect on Chinese culture, much as did China's indigenous religions. Some argue that the proliferation of Gods in "Daoism" can be tracked to an attempt to compete with the number of Buddhist Gods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_hell

Also, are you planning on focusing on Pure Confucianism or Neo Confucianism or a dichotomy between the two?

--

I like your work generally; there are too few detailed settings based on China that are currently released.

Beyond the ones mentioned, the ones I can think of are- Anima (though I suspect it's more Japan than China based; I only glanced at it); Paizo's Golarion had the Jade Regent Path and its own far eastern area... I found myself more annoyed by the direct country analogues, but Paizo should be recognized for including a Korean country and several varieties of China and Vietnam... And making some astute choices with naming-I identified the Korean country by its name alone- "oh, that's likely the Korean one... yep, yeah it is". Overall, however, Paizo's eastern-setting seemed a bit forced and more trappings than anything else.

[Xathan]

GP, you've apologized 3 times for derailing the thread when there is a thread now to discuss exactly what you're trying to discuss here; please relocate the conversation. :)

[LD]

Ah! I just thought of another setting not yet mentioned; Exalted. Bits and bobs of it with the giant empire and the generals here and there evoke some Chinese themes.

[Gamer Printshop]

Except for the last post, which I removed (and the only one I 'apologized for'), I thought I was generally on topic - I was comparing it to my setting, but discussing the topic at hand. I see the thread is split now, but I didn't see the split until after the second post.

[Cheomesh]

Your notes look like a good start, especially the broad strokes.  War seems to be the major driving force, with the fourth-kingdom-as-battleground; I get the sense of a very military sort of focus.  Is this intentional, or more a function of the "top-down" overlay of your notes?  Often in Sword & Sorcery the focus isn't on large conflicts but on small ones; they tend to be picaresques more than epics.  Do you see this as a very rural/wilderness-y game, or more urban in focus?

The military focus is intentional.  This is a tense period coming on the heel of a devastating war, and all of the (now slightly more fleshed out) factions are ideologically opposed and blooded on each other.  As to where the adventure would be, probably in the rural reaches.  I forsee the axis being the regions around some new settlement town (China has, in its past, had a habit of taking thousands of people from one place and settling them in newly conquered territory).  A more urban "fall back" for R&R and buying stuff the rustics cannot make would be a large fortress town.
I had an idea that the players would be in the employ of the new Magistrate, who is a significant figure to their faction's leader.  They had a falling out very recently over X, and this appointment (to an unsecure bumpkinville) seems like an insult.  That is, assuming there were players, which there are not.

One thing I've noticed about settings that depart from the "Late Medieval Europe" paradigm is that they tend to follow the myths and politics of their source material more closely, whereas in the typical Late Medieval setting, stranger elements tend to creep in to liven up the endless grey castles, knights, feudal villages, etc.  Like, if you take Lankhmar, for example, it's pretty clearly a sort of vaguely European city somewhere between London and Seville, but it's got sentient rats and weird gods and seven-eyed wizards and invisible ghouls and all sorts of bizarre stuff that owes very little to European mythology per se, at least in any pure sense.  But then you look at Rokugon, and it's pretty much feudal Japan with some monsters borrowed form other Asian myths and modified a little to fit a game-world.  It's all very "authentic."

I was surprised to find out that we actually had a splinter discussion on authenticity.  I wont speak to that here in detail, but I think the reason for your phenomenon is the reader's passion.  With the Standard Style Fantasy Setting, you attract all sorts, and they come for all kinds of reasons.  This is helped if you have a kitchen sink setting, or one similarly broad.  Niche settings, however, tend to be the brainchild of someone who is very interested in that subject.  The serial numbers may be filed off, but it'll be very intricate because of their knowledge of the subject at hand.  I tend to do this with Medieval European settings in some form.  I once wrote a Domesday Book like writeup for a single village of ~800 people which detailed everything down to the last chicken and bake house, all in line with historical figures.  That was some years ago.

I'd point to something like Leetz' Arga or Ghostman's Savage Age as interesting counterexamples that riff of their source material without being beholden to it.
Just some thoughts to ponder.

Pondered indeed, and I will check those settings out – thanks!

Whenever I see "Psuedo-BLANK" setting, my immediate reaction is "This is going to go well or this is gonna suck."

I think you're headed majorly towards "Well."

The class list is my favorite part; I love that instead of your class being what you do "I'm a fighter," "I"m a rogue" It's who you are "I"m a member of the militia", "I'm a Diafu." I do think the Spiritualist class is where that breaks down; it feels so generic compared to the others. Maybe spit it up into "Qi-user", "Taoist sorcerer," and "Diviner?"

I'll give some more feedback later on, but wanted to share my 2cp.

Excellent, I hope I stay on the "Well".  What, in your opinion, would keep this project going in that direction?

The classes as social roles is a good guidance for making setting notes from the perspective of "How do I play in it", I think.  Actually, the "class list" is where it began, as I was reading around about Chi powers in one of the GURPS books and wondered what playing an educated, jian-wielding Chi-power using Scholar Official would be like.

I will be putting in light weight templates that serve as a guide for what the mechanics of each would be like.  It will be in GURPS fashion, but the gist of it will be summarized in words, and the templates give you a little more detail.  Some classes will be stricter in requirements, while others will be very loose.  The Militiaman, for example, might not be more than 10 points, while the Scholar Official will probably be a weekend project.  The militiaman doesn't even get a point in weapon skills; he just gets the "Dabbler" advantage, I think, and is slightly better than absolutely untrained.  Entirely probable that this sort of campaign (run by me anyways) would have unequal point values; this is something that only works with specific group types.

The "Spiritualist" entry probably could have used a bit more clarity.  It actually is split up as "Pure Chi User", "Tao Sorcerer", "Wu", but for the sake of brevity it wasn't copied from the "Spiritual" section where all of those are mentioned.  When submitting a role to me as the GM, for example, you would tell me specifically what kind of "Spiritualist" you'd be.  Thanks!

I like the amount of "Chinese" feel, personally. While it's probably not historically accurate to just ram together two disparate eras like you did, I think that, in practice, the amount of damage done is minimal. You're mixing it up, and that's good, and creating an interesting setting that isn't strictly bound to one era of history, and that's good too. I think authenticity for its own sake doesn't add much, personally.

I put a lot of effort into the authenticity of various settings (shown off here and not).  In reality, unless you are trying to pander to a very specific group of gamers, it does nothing and usually ends up detracting from everything by creating a rigid structure.  Over preparation, really – answer your own questions during creation with a sentence or two and leave the rest for the players to tell me about.  That's what I've heard, anyways.

Ramming together two periods (actually four – "Banner Soldiers" are a Manchu thing, and the Scholar Official was a product of the Suei dynasty reforms) has its advantages.  The Warring States period brought an end to Feudal style armies and was so horribly destructive that China sort of demonized soldiering in popular culture for a long, long time (at times turning soldiers into subhuman non-citizens – never ended well).  It ended their bronze weapon using period and ushered in mass conscript armies.  The Three Kingdoms period had war with these armies, but also gave a framework of governmental organization.  A little from Column A, a little from Column B...

The nice thing about a lot of these "premodern" settings is that all sorts of subtle magic can be worked in and it doesn't diminish the feel at all, even if the feel is supposed to be vaguely historical. In these times, people weren't that often trying to scientifically look at everything, and there were a lot of beliefs and superstition-- and enough inexplicable events going on in the world that these beliefs had more than enough substantiation, in people's minds. Throwing in people who have some actual powers into this mix isn't exactly a huge departure. It adds options for players and mystery to the setting without, I think, destroying what it's all about. (On the other hand, I feel like the magnitude of magical power in something like D&D, taken to its logical end, destroys what the setting is supposed to be about)

We will talk about the magnitude of magical power in D&D (and why it confuses my mind that there are "knights" and "fighters" and armies that fight in ranks at all) in another thread (which I have been meaning to start for...oh, 3 years now come to think).  While the "Tao" (or whatever word replaces that) uses magic that conjures the famous balls of flame or flying shards of wood (Chinese elements here), the rest is less visually awesome or destructive.  Wu ask spirits to do things (which means I'm going to have to read up on that kind of magic).  Qi users dodge exceptionally well or gain the ability to parry an arrow, sprint across water briefly, that kind of thing.  Ceremonial magic does other stuff, if that stays around (might be a variant of Tao, might be a part of folk religious stuff, who knows).  Magic is really my weak suite, because I don't use it often and my exposure is pretty much level 0-3 D&D style spells.  Yeah.  GURPS has a few really neat mechanics I'd like to play with, though, so who knows.

I also like the idea of connecting the players to the "fourth kingdom," with some caveats, anyway. The idea of struggling against greater powers and carving out your own kingdom-- one that you get to shape-- is something that I think the traditional RPG can do better than many other types of games, because of the way the creativity of the players and the GM can take things in a new direction. On the other hand, this kind of thing can easily frustrate players, too, if the game devolves from that into simply them being at the mercy of these greater powers, and a whole bunch of "more awesome than you" NPCs being paraded around. This is the problem Forgotten Realms had a lot of the time.

That's not to say I think you're going to do this, I'm just saying, it might be a good idea to watch out for that.  :grin:

The "fourth kingdom" (Kui, meaning Defeated if used as a noun), is the setting.  It's probably very large, or at least it was before it had chunks taken out by the other kingdoms.  I think it would give a playground for all kinds of foes so that I could run a very action oriented campaign fighting off bandits, Kui partisans, warriors of the other kingdoms, etc.  It would thus allow intrigue and diplomacy to turn some of those Foes into Friends for the players purposes.

As above, they'd be in a new colony area.  True to life, none of the power players of the players kingdom trust each other fully, so the special detachment the players belong to would be made up of these disparate members (justifying the random "class" approach in a military setting).  It also creates potential drama in case I'd have players who'd prefer to stay within the walls (where there is proper tea, thank you very much) and follow intrigues and plots instead of doing errands out in what is basically a warzone.

Now, I wasn't into the Forgotten Realms setting, so I am afraid I don't get the reference (do enlighten me though, sounds like it could be good).  The warning is heeded, though!  A reward in some form of actual social power should accompany any great achievement the party creates.  Mayhaps they'll be their own Magistrates before long.

Finally, I agree with Xathan that making the "classes" actual jobs/roles in the setting is a good idea. It gives players an archetype to work from, but also allows them to break archetype more easily, because the class isn't some meta-archetype of "a thing you have to be" but rather an actual job that exists in the setting, and the sorts of people who do that job may actually differ from one another quite significantly.

Agreeing on the breaking Archetype.  Strong, neigh immutable archetypes are what drove me from games like D&D.  Given the grab bag of my usual GURPS or the style of FATE (and other narrative systems), archetypes are much easier to leave as a paragraph, or a few benchmarks at best.  As I mentioned above, while something like the Daifu would have a longer list of requirements, something like the Militiaman or Wu would be significantly more open ended.  Tying it to a tangible thing gives a better feel for how it should be played and how other people interact with them.  Not every game does this.  Thank you for your input (and moderating)!

Have you given some thought to including the younger brother of Jesus Christ in some form?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan

" As a symbolic gesture to purge China of Confucianism, he asked for two giant swords, three chi (about 1 metre) long and nine jin (about 5.5 kg), called the "demon-slaying swords" (斬妖劍), to be forged."

Also, Buddhist Hell could have some relevancy. Sculptures and reliefs of Buddhist Hell can be found in certain locations in China and Buddhism had a significant effect on Chinese culture, much as did China's indigenous religions. Some argue that the proliferation of Gods in "Daoism" can be tracked to an attempt to compete with the number of Buddhist Gods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_hell

For whatever reason when I typed the keys, I decided I did not want Buddhism allegories to feature, at least not directly.  It could be my personal prejudices or perhaps chance, but I left it out.  I suppose I have enough difficulty figuring out how I can evilize Daoism.

Also, are you planning on focusing on Pure Confucianism or Neo Confucianism or a dichotomy between the two?

So far, I think it'll be a wash between the two.  I am still finding all the specific differences.  It seems to boil down to removing religious influences, which implies Neo is taking over.  While the Confucian-like state has no official faith (unlike Kang), the folk religion at least plays a part in everyday life, as well as perhaps a non-evil version of Daoism.  Thanks for those leads (and feed back) though, who knows what I will plunder?

Also:  I updated the original document and added links to the new ones I created.  It is all still very basic.  Give it a go and if you feel attracted to some thing or another, ask questions or point out problems so my attention is directed at things people like reading about, and not on the logistics of this border outpost.  Thanks again!  Let's see what can be made.

M.